Here we go!! This is my article for the Reach To Teach Teach Abroad Blog Carnival, which I have already taken the time to generously explain, so if you haven’t checked out my other posts, you’re lazy (Go ahead and check my last post, and then come back. Done? Great! Continue).
Check back for more articles, and if you’d like to contribute to next month’s Blog Carnival, leave me a comment on here or email me at sammiedsimile@gmail.com, and I will get you hooked up. You can thank me later. Enjoy our Carnival, and please, enjoy my Circus!
(Oh, and here’s the link for the Carnival. This will take you to the page where you can find everyone else’s posts. Enjoy! http://www.reachtoteachrecruiting.com/living-abroad-better-teachers)
A few months back, I was sitting on the back of a motorcycle driven by a man I had met the night before, and I couldn’t tell you what his name was (let alone in English because he did not speak it), but I could tell you that he was a girl at taking shots of anything and that (hopefully) there was food in my immediate future.
Now, you might be thinking that this is a pretty terrible way to introduce my opinion on how traveling makes you a better person, but I promise I have a point. Anyway, at that moment a single thought popped into my rapidly-heading-towards-a-hangover brain, “Oh, no. My father would slaughter me.”
…And just as quickly as it hit me in the face, it was replaced. I snapped awake (in a sense) and realized that it simply didn’t matter. It didn’t matter what he would think of the things I was doing in Taiwan. Or in China. Or anywhere. The only thing that mattered, at that moment, was my age. I kept thinking over and over again that I was 24 years old. That’s it. 24. And I was fantastic at being 24 years old.
What did that mean? Well, I have lived in 3 countries in the last year alone, and I have traveled through even more than that. I have been learning how to let go and just do. Follow my gut and my heart and my instinct and go, go, go, go, see, see, see, see, do, do, do, do. It wasn’t really until that moment that I completely realized and accepted how insanely cool that was.
THIS acceptance. THIS kind of living. THIS is how you can use traveling to become a better person.
Now, I’m not saying that you should drop all consideration of what anyone thinks of you. That is (obviously) not even a good way to live. If you’ve had access to the outside world in the last few weeks, then you have seen what happens when you throw it out the window (What’s up, Miley? Looking like a pretty big hot mess, girl. Try to tone that down). No. That’s not the point. The whole idea is to let go of any preconceived notions of what you HAVE to do or who you HAVE to be. You’re not a 16-year old child living in your parents’ house anymore—you’re on your own. Completely on your own. Mommy and Daddy aren’t even in the same hemisphere. No one can hold your hand. No one can make you comfortable. In fact, this is the perfect opportunity to chuck your comfort zone out of your life for a while. I’ve found I can continuously push my limits. I’ve learned how to let go, how to experience things I would never experience. I’ve learned how to be brave. Brave enough to go out, meet people who don’t even speak the same language as me, stay out drinking with them until 8 am and then hop on the back of this dude’s bike and let him take me around all day (even though he may have been serial killer. Or whatever. It didn’t matter).
This was a very real and very loud (in my mind) epiphany, and I literally spread my hands and yelled in joy at the sky. I’m pretty positive I ruined this poor, weird Taiwanese guy, but it was worth it. I was the best version of a 24-year old, world-traveling Samantha that I could possibly be, and it didn’t matter that my father wouldn’t have exactly (at all) approved of my antics. Sorry, Dad.
THIS is a wave that I am going to ride out as long as I can get away with it. But allow me to explain myself a bit more before you go on assuming that this post is about being a drunken idiot and somehow that makes you not just another Miley Cyrus trying to prove yourself an adult. Up to this point, I’ve been giving you nothing but introduction. I’ve already promised that there is a real point to this, and I will actually tell you how I think you can make yourself better.
First, you have to know though, it takes a lot of ballsy thoughtlessness, an open mind, and a grasp of who you are to pull this off—it’s easy to get caught up in the whirlwind you’re about to create and lose yourself. Don’t let that happen. This kind of thinking requires you to be ridiculous, and that means whatever you want it to mean. Think of it this way, you’re already brave enough to get out of your home country, and hopefully you’re not treating your traveling like a summer camp (where are the counselors? At camp. Exactly where you aren’t). No one should be telling you what to do or where to go or whom you should be hanging out with. If you begin a night out with a group of friends and you meet someone who you want to leave with—you do it: like a boss. Arrange things with the people you came with (don’t be a shady idiot. That’s pretty much the opposite of being a better person), and then go do something wild.
Do you want to go to Hong Kong just to have dinner? Do you want to backpack through Brazil with a strange man who only speaks Portuguese? Do you want to challenge a Taiwanese man to a battle of whiskey shots? Yeah, you should go ahead and do those things.
There is no real need to plan out your life or your actions while you’re here (or there. Wherever you are). I have met people who won’t go out and explore or push themselves outside of their comfort zones because they are too concerned about what they’re going to do in the future. “What job will I have? Where will I live? What should I be doing now to put myself in a position to be super successful when I’m 40?”
….Whaaaat? Who cares? When I was a child, I didn’t worry about what was going to happen when I was 24, and it happened anyway. Life has a funny way of working out like that, so why not go ahead and be crazy while you have the time to do so?
“But wait! Sam, is this a very safe way of thinking? Aren’t I going to get in trouble at some point!? Won’t at least one of these rash decisions turn out to be a really bad choice?”
Yup. Without a doubt, one of them will. Maybe more than one. Hopefully more than one. You’ll learn. And that’s the point, right? These are experiences in YOUR life—not anyone else’s—and they are going to teach you. You cannot learn from yourself without knowing and understanding both good and bad—euphoric and utterly humiliating emotional experiences.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to wake up in a dark room that isn’t your own after a night of partying with one (or two, or three) people who can’t speak English? Well, there’s only one way to find out. And who knows? You might be into that kind of thing. I won’t judge you. You could also wake up from that and be mortified, scared, confused and angry. Well, now you know: Don’t do that again.
After a while, you’ll realize that everything you’ve done in the past has made you into who you are today, and that includes every bad decision you’ve ever made. I firmly believe that the best way in moving forward is screwing up… a lot. And one of the best things about screwing up in a foreign country is that no one else really knows or cares about it, and those mistakes don’t quite follow you back to you home when or should you choose to leave.
But being abroad and having this mindset doesn’t strictly limit you to making slutty choices in bars with a bunch of non-English speakers. This idea of following your desires can be as simple as trying some new, weird type of food that you’d never have the opportunity to truly taste back home. Seriously, when was the last time you had chicken feet and red bean ice cream for dinner? (Actually, it was sometime around March, I think).
You’ll become more and more brave the longer you allow yourself to be. You’ll stop asking for advice from your friends and family back home, because you’ll learn that it doesn’t really apply to you anymore. You’ll be glad that you know how to go out and find your own answers (and see some weird shit along the way). What the Hell does your Mom know about that Thai tattoo artist? She’s been stuck in Cleveland for the last 35 years, but you sure know that you’re willing to let him tattoo you right now. So let him.
You’re going to use all of this experience throughout your life, and you now have SO MUCH because you were willing to blindly go after what you wanted. You’ll learn how to make friends all over the world, because you’re about to equalize yourself with everyone. You’ll have been up and down. You’ll know that you could do more than you ever thought possible, and at the same time you’ll learn that you’re no better than anyone else in the world (I mean, look at all of the times you screwed up. Be humble).
You’re going to learn about the things you enjoy, and you’ll figure out all the things you loathe. You’ll learn how to love and how to hate. You’ll learn how to be angry and sympathetic. You’ll see the difference between being alone and being lonely. You’re going to understand what it means to be scared, confused, ecstatic and excited. You will learn how to screw up completely on your own. No one will have to hold your hand through your screw-ups. No one will have to tell you that afterwards, it will all be ok. You’ll already know that it will be. You’ll begin to see the world differently, and you’re going to love it. You’re going to learn to be patient with people, because you’ve done enough to cause more than your share of people to be patient with you. You’ll learn how to develop emotional ties to communities, cities, and countries because of the impact of your own choices on your own life while you were there.
You’re going to find out how to just completely suck. You’ll figure out when you’re at your worst. Because that, my friends, is how you become better.